The 50 Most New York Albums

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs might not be the hipster band du jour anymore, but Fever to Tell is still a perfect downtown New York record, gritty and artsy and stylish. Karen O has always sounded (and dressed) like the most inaccessibly hip girl at the art school party, but Fever's appeal is also about the genuine substance locked inside layers of noise and attitude and snarl. O's lines here are plaintive and written to cut like diamonds, like when she addresses a string of no-good lovers in "Y Control," rebuking both them and herself: "Well I'm just one poor baby/'Cause well I believe them all/Wish I could buy back the woman you stole..."

For the past week we've been locked in the torch of the Statue of Liberty, subsisting on nothing but Russ & Daughters' lox, listening to the best records about, by, and for New York City through headphones endorsed by Lou Reed. Our mission: to come up with a list of the 50 Most NYC Albums Ever; albums born of the five boroughs that best capture what it's like to live, love, struggle, and exist in the sprawling, unforgiving, culturally dense metropolis we pay too much to call home. The albums we finally agreed upon capture everything from the unaffected cool of the Lower East Side to the horn-spiked salsa of Spanish Harlem and much more. So let's get to it. Here, now, the 50 most quintessential New York records. Apologies in advance for The Muppets Take Manhattan not making the cut.